Howard LaSalle Kearns was born in Springville, Utah in 1907. He was a successful oil painter and watercolorist who painted landscapes in a rural regionalist style. He died in Salt Lake City in 1947.

Kearns studied under B. F. Larsen at Brigham Young University, at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, and at the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California. He and artist-friends Gordon Cope and Hughes Curtis spent much of their time together.

After Kearns's death, Springville High School Art Gallery hosted an exhibition of 173 of his paintings. Among Kearns's paintings held in the Springville Museum of Art permanent collection are Hills Near Scipio (1947), an oil painting, H. Van Watkin's Ranch in Bluff, Utah (1940), an oil, and Mercur (1930), a woodcut.

Biograpy adapted from Artists of Utah.

Howard Kearns of Springville, Utah, trained under Brigham Young University painter B.F. Larsen, and did further work at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco and the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California. An interesting printmaker and painter of the rural Utah landscape in watercolors and oils, Kearns was also a pianist, organist, accordionist, conductor, and music teacher before his untimely passing.

Biography courtesy Artists of Utah

Books

Dunbier, Roger. North American Artists: The Artists Bluebook. Scottsdale, AZ: AskART.com, 2000.

Olpin, Robert S., William C. Seifrit, and Vern G. Swanson. Artists of Utah. Salt Lake City, UT: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1999.

Springville Museum of Art. Permanent Collection Catalog. Springville, UT: Springville Museum of Art, 1972.

Swanson, Vern G. Robert S. Olpin, Donna Poulton, and Janie Rogers. 150 Year Survey of Utah Art, Utah Artists. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 2001.

Swanson, Vern G., Robert S. Olpin, and William C. Seifrit. Utah Painting and Sculpture. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1991.